Three weeks after Chevron failed to persuade an Ecuadorian appeals court to overturn a US$18 billion judgment against it in a landmark Amazon rainforest oil-pollution suit, the oil giant took the case to Ecuador’s highest tribunal. Chevron, which inherited the legal battle by virtue of its acquisition of Texaco in 2001, filed a petition on Jan. 20 with the National Court of Justice. If the high court agrees to hear the case, legal observers say, several more years could be added to the rough-and-tumble litigation, which dates back nearly two decades. At issue is a ruling issued Feb. 14, 2011 by a lower court in the hardscrabble town of Lago Agrio, near where the disputed oilfield operations occurred. Judge Nicolás Zambrano... [Log in to read more]